


memento

by SaekoCrolla (Crollalanza)



Series: Sports Fest 2018 Haikyuu!! [37]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: College AU, Gen, Loss, inexplicable happenings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 02:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16567841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crollalanza/pseuds/SaekoCrolla
Summary: [Hey, where are you? Still on for ramen tomorrow?]Chikara sends the message and waits.But Kenji never replies.





	memento

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for sportsfest 2018. The prompt was a manga cap and some dialogie about someone disappearing and leaving no trace nor mementos. 
> 
> It's deliberately ambiguous.

One side of the room is bare.

The bed stripped, drawers open and empty, shelves devoid of what books he’d owned. Even the gum wrappers he’d lobbed at the bin and never bothered to clear up when he missed, had gone.

There is no note, but then if someone were merely moving across the hall to a newly vacated student room, then there wouldn’t be. They’d still see each other—maybe in the kitchen over coffee—bump into each other in the cafeteria, or at a game.

“Hey, you could have let me know!” Chikara would say, and throw a milk carton at his head. Then turn and laugh over his shoulder. “Know what this guy did? He moved out without telling me. Never seen the place so tidy!”

It’s later when he’s checked the empty room across the hall and found it’s still unoccupied that he starts to wonder. He picks up his phone and sends a text.

**[Hey, where are you? Still on for ramen tomorrow?]**

There’s no reply but then he’s never that prompt about replying, so Chikara puts down the phone, pulls out his laptop and makes a start on researching his next project.

When the phone beeps and a ‘Not Delivered’ message flashes on the screen, it still doesn’t compute that he’s gone because … well, Kenji’s lost a phone before now, so why wouldn’t it happen again?

~~~

The lecturer rubs his eyes and replaces his glasses before replying. “No, Ennoshita-kun, I have no idea where he is. When he turns up, tell him his essay is overdue.”

The essay remains overdue. He’d been working on it the last time Chikara saw him, plugged into his phone as he typed, singing the odd refrain.

~~~

Chikara calls Kenji’s parents, but the number he has is unobtainable, or perhaps Kenji hadn’t given him the right one. He’d never struck Chikara as being evasive, but then why would Chikara be looking for deception?

Was it all a lie? Did he imagine the dumb discussions over pizza, and Kenji bringing him chicken soup the last time he was ill?

He remembers a row over something stupid and wonders if that caused a wound which festered. But Kenji was never shy about yelling his anger, and the argument really had been idiotic and over nothing important.

~~~

 

Years later, Chikara turns this into a film.  A college kid is on the run for a crime he witnessed, and another boy left behind wondering.  The film ends with a postcard landing on the doormat and after the stamp is steamed off, a location is revealed.

But Chikara received no such information, and as he wraps up the day’s shooting, he is painfully aware that there are no mementoes except the image in his mind.

And even that is fading.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Jess (karasunovolleygays) wrote a remix of this, which is her version of why Futakuchi left. It's called Waysides. Perhaps it's true, or perhaps Chikara was right with his film? Who knows?


End file.
